on the part of the graduate engineer. Because his education has been
general in the field, and he now holds a position with a company
manufacturing steam-turbines, say, he must "wise up," as the saying
goes, on the subject of steam-turbines. It will do him no harm to trace
back to its source all progress made in the field of turbine engineering
and construction. He will find no scarcity of books on the subject, and
with every hour spent with these volumes he will become more valuable to
the organization employing him. Likewise, if he find himself working for
an electrical manufacturing concern, and himself a graduate in
electrical engineering, if the product be only a single line, and so
small a thing as spark-plugs, it will profit him greatly to read
whatever has been printed on the subject of spark-plugs. So with the
mining graduate in the matter of the different processes of recovering
minerals; so with the civil graduate, especially in the concrete field
of construction, which has made rapid strides in the past few years--the
graduate should absorb as much as he can of the available works printed
on the subject. Indeed, this is the profession of it, in that the
practitioner must ever be alive and alert to what is being done and has
been done from the beginning in his chosen line of endeavor.
Next must come fealty. The graduate on his first job must believe--and
if he does not believe ought to change connections--that the product of
his company is the best in the market. This need not necessarily be
true; but he must feel that it is true. For only in this way can he put
the best that is in him into his work. Industry--and the engineer is the
backbone of industry--is a hotbed of competition. Any organization needs
all the enthusiasm it can get. Greatest enthusiasm of all must come from
within its own circles. Lacking this enthusiasm within its own family,
the organization as a whole suffers. The graduate must first of all
supply enthusiasm to the source of his employment, because at first he
can supply but very little else. He must be true to his trust in ways
other than the mere doing of what he is told or producing what he is
expected to produce. This attitude cannot but help him qualify for
promotion, and rapidly. It is a very important factor in any engineer's
advancement.
Then there is the matter of patience. The writer knows of no other
qualification more fruitful of reward than patience. The word control is
frequently used in this regard--self-control. Its other name, however,
is patience--the thing that gives a man to try and try again until he
succeeds. Engineering is a difficult profession, though not more
difficult than other professions, and in the average engineer's
working-day many things occur which, if he be not possessed of infinite
patience, will serve to try him to a considerable degree. Patience with
those below him--patience with those above him--patience with
himself--these are all necessary and will prove helpful to him in
reaching the top. He must accept the petty tasks with a cheerfulness no
less apparent than he accepts the more important ones. He must present
his own ideas to his superiors with a degree of caution which, where the
ideas are rejected, will yet permit him to withdraw within himself
without giving the impression of being peeved. For engineering is above
all other things the interchange of ideas among men having an equal
training but a vastly different quality of experience. Men of diverse
experience thus drawn together make for a balanced engineering staff,
and a balanced engineering staff makes for a well-organized whole. The
young engineer must conduct himself in such a way that his superiors
will like him for what he is, as indicated by his personality, rather
than for what he knows or does in his daily work.
To sum up, then, the young engineer, having entered upon his first job,
must do three or four things in order quickly to qualify for promotion.
He first of all must spend time in study after his day's work is
done--absorb all information having to do with the company's own
product; hold himself ever alert to the company's own methods of
production; watch for an opportunity whereby this production may be
improved upon or the methods of production themselves improved upon. The
young engineer must proceed slowly in everything he undertakes; when
brought to a halt through difficulties he should instantly appeal to one
or another of his associates or superiors; he must be absolutely frank
in all his dealings with these associates and superiors. In this regard,
also, it might be said that the young graduate, following a habit become
almost second nature with him in his school-days, must keep a note-book
covering his activities throughout each working-day, a book wherein he
will jot down everything of value to him which comes up in the day's
work. Such books often form the basis of complete text-books in after
years, and, indeed, are acknowledged to be the foundation of more than
one recognized authority. Though in this regard, further, such a
practice is sometimes discouraged in some organizations, since it is
apparent that these note-books often contain facts which the
organization does not wish to have made public, being, as these notes
often are, in the nature of trade secrets. However, the student with a
conscience will effectively guard the secrets of his employer as
contained in his note-book, holding its contents for his own use in
furthering the interests of the company which employs him.
And finally--in the matter of personality--patience and regard for the
foibles of others will go far toward advancing the young engineer toward
success. He must never forget in his earlier years that he is embryonic
in the profession; that the profession is a difficult one and with many
ramifications; that if he was able to live through three normal lives he
would yet know only a very little of what there is to know about his
chosen work. Thus he will conduct himself in a manner designed to win
the interest and affection of men who are superior to him. Life to-day
consists more than ever of service, and no man can go the path alone.
Service--assistance one to another--makes up the sum total of life. No
engineering graduate--no young man in any walk of life--can progress far
without assistance, however brilliant as a student and capable as a man
he may be. If he will but bear this last in mind--this and the other
even more important truth, that as a man gives so shall he
receive--that a dollar spent in charity means two dollars in the bank--I
mean that exactly--then the heights themselves will beckon to him at an
early age.
"Early to bed and early to rise"; "take care of the pennies and the
dollars will take care of themselves"; "a bird in the hand is worth two
in the bush"--we don't need--the engineering graduate does not
need--that form of admonition. It means nothing and is false. What alone
counts for success is a considerable regard for the rights and
privileges of others, the unfortunate as well as the fortunate. Greed
never brought success that was lasting to any one, and certainly it
breeds unhappiness. Engineering is a work of service--service to
others--and to the graduate who "gets" this truism will come all things
of this life, not the least of which will be material rewards.
VII
THE CONSULTING ENGINEER
The consulting engineer represents the pinnacle, as it were, of
professional success. The inventor is something else--a wilding in the
profession--and as such cannot be considered in a paper of this kind,
save only as to say that he is the presiding genius among engineers, the
Shakespeare or Milton among his kind, a man whose path to the heights is
nowhere known of men. The consulting engineer, on the contrary,
representing, as he does, the zenith of slowly attained power in some
certain branch of engineering, a vantage--point open freely to all, is
the embodiment of the goal toward which all graduates should strive. The
consulting engineer has perfected himself in his chosen field; he has
become an authority in his branch of engineering; his word is accepted
as final in court and privy council. Having gained to this enviable
position only after prolonged study and protracted and wide experience
in his particular specialty, the consulting engineer has well earned
whatever accrues to him in the way, among other things, of generous fees
for his services.
Still, there are consulting engineers who have become so through
accident. The writer personally knows a consulting engineer who was
following a general engineering practice when called upon one day to
advise a group of capitalists in the matter of a garbage-disposal plant
of new design for a large mid-Western city. His services were sought not
because he was a garbage expert, but rather because he was expert in
intricate pipe layouts and the like. However, once he got his hand into
garbage disposition on a large scale, he remained in this branch of
engineering, eventually traveling about the country supervising the
design of similar plants whose object was the economical disposal of
municipal refuse. Practically alone in the field, his writings soon
became accepted as authoritative, and yet the whole thing began with
that first call, quite by chance, in a matter foreign to the subject.
Like other professional men, engineers never know when the heavens will
open for their particular benefit.
Yet these cases are rare. The average consulting engineer is a man who
has won to pre-eminence only through protracted study and hard work in
one line. He is a specialist with a high reputation for accuracy and
skill in that line. The basis of this skill, of course, lies in a broad
general engineering experience, upon which is built a peculiar knowledge
of a certain, and not infrequently isolated, branch of engineering.
Heating and ventilating engineers are but specialists grown to such
large numbers as to form a definite branch of engineering. Likewise,
automotive engineers are men who have specialized through long years in
this branch. The man who knows more about building dredges, say, than
any other man among his engineering brothers is a man who will be most
frequently sought by industrial powers feeling the need for a dredge,
just as a man suffering eye-strain will seek out the best specialist
known to the medical fraternity. He goes to the one acknowledged
authority in this line, and in doing so but follows a sane inner
dictation.
And that is consulting work. The individual of money who would launch
into manufacturing, knowing nothing of manufacturing, will, after
deciding as to which branch of manufacturing he wishes to follow,
enlist the services of a consulting engineer big by reputation in this
branch. The capitalist may wish to enter the paper-manufacturing field.
Straightway he will put himself in touch with a consulting engineer
whose specialty is paper-manufacturing plants, and, having informed this
man as to the amount of money he is willing to spend on the venture,
together with the location where he wishes, within certain prescribed
limitations, to have his plant stand, may withdraw from the thing, if he
choose, until the plant is built and in operation. The consulting
engineer has done the rest. He has gone out upon location, seeking sites
with an eye to economy both of power and transportation; he has
supervised the design of the plant and the location in the plant of the
necessary machinery; has enlisted the service of a builder whose task it
is to follow these plans from foundation to roof in the work of actual
construction. For this work the consulting engineer receives a fee,
usually based upon a percentage of the cost, and then turns to other
clients--waiting in his outer office--who would enlist his services in a
similar capacity.
The consulting engineer has other sources of revenue. Like the lawyer,
he is frequently retained by traction and lighting interests to guard
the rights of these interests, service for which he receives payment by
the year. His testimony is valued in matters of litigation, sometimes
patent infringements, sometimes municipal warfare between corporations,
but always of a highly specialized nature. He is an authority, and when
I have said that I have said all. His retainer fees are large; his work
is exact; he is a man looked up to by those in the profession following
a general practice. He has his office, and retains a staff of engineers,
usually young engineers just out of college, who, like himself at one
time, are on their way upward in the game. He is rarely a young man;
generally is a man of wide reading; is a man respected in his community
not for what he knows as an engineer, but for the standard of living
which he is able to set by virtue of his income. Besides the sources of
revenue which are his, and as I have set forth above, he is sought by
technical editors to contribute to magazines powerful in his field, and
this is a pleasurable source of income to any man in any walk of life.
The consulting engineer is a man to be admired and emulated by all
engineering students.
As to the time in life when an engineer feels qualified to enter upon
consulting work, that is something which must come to him from within.
Usually the engineer knows that he has become a factor in his chosen
branch or specialty when he finds himself becoming more and more sought
in an advisory capacity among his fellows. He can judge that he has
become an authority in his work by the simple process of comparing
himself and his work with others and the work of these others in the
field. If he finds that he is designing a better plant or automatic
machine, or more economically operated mine or more serviceable lighting
station than his neighbor, and, together with this knowledge, perceives
also that capitalists are beating a deeper path to his door than to the
doors of his competitors--to warp an Emersonian phrase--then the
handwriting on the wall should be clear to him--to quote the Bible.
Having sufficient capital to carry him through a year or two of personal
venturing in the consulting field, he will open an office and insert his
professional card in the journals in his field--and fly to it. If he be
a man of righteous parts, he will succeed as a consulting engineer--and
can go no higher in the profession.
The game is certainly worth the candle.
VIII
THE ENGINEER IN CIVIC AFFAIRS
Much has been written of late of the engineer as a citizen--of his civic
responsibilities, of his relation to legislation, to administration, to
public opinion, and the like. It is timely writing. The engineer is
about due for active participation in civic affairs other than a yearly
visit to the polls to register his vote. He has not done much more than
this since his inception. His work alone has sufficed, for him, at
least, though the time is past when he can bury himself in his
professional work and, in the vernacular, get away with it. Men of the
stamp of Herbert Hoover have demonstrated the very great need for men of
scientific training in public affairs. Such places heretofore have been
filled with business men and lawyers. These men served and served well.
But since administration of public affairs to-day is largely a matter of
formulation and execution of engineering projects, it is assuredly the
duty of engineers to take an active part in these public affairs.
Exact knowledge, which in a manner of speaking is synonymous with the
engineer, is needed in high places in our nation. Men of technical
education and training have demonstrated their fitness as servants of
the people in the few instances where such men have taken over the reins
of administration in certain specified branches of our government.
Trained to think in terms of figures and the relation of these figures
to life, engineers readily perceive the true and the untrue in matters
of legislation and administration, though as a body they have never
exerted themselves to an expression of their opinions on matters coming
properly under the head of public opinion. Engineers have felt that they
have not had the time. Or, having the time, that the public at large,
chiefly owing to the engineer's self-imposed isolation, would not
understand a voice from this direction, and so engineers have kept
silent. The day has arrived, however, when this silence on the part of
engineers must be broken.
The World War has been an awakening in this as in other directions.
Lawyers and politicians have successfully dominated our government from
its beginning, with a single beautiful exception in George Washington at
one end and another admirable exception in Woodrow Wilson at the other.
Washington was a civil engineer, and Wilson, while trained as a lawyer,
was an educator. In between these two men there may have fallen a
scattering of others who were not lawyers or politicians; the writer is
not sure. Of one thing he is sure, however, and that is that engineers
in the future will dominate politics to the betterment of the nation as
a whole. For engineers are idealists--otherwise they would never have
entered upon an engineering career--and idealism has come, as it were,
into its own again. The man of vision of a wholesome aspect, the man who
can so completely forget himself in his work of service as to engage in
tasks whose merits nobody save himself and those pursuing like tasks can
or will understand--which is pre-eminently the engineer--is the one man
best fitted to administrate in public affairs. More important still than
this statement is the fact that the world at large is beginning to
realize the truth of it. Engineers as a body stand poised upon the rim
of big things. Nor will they as a body stoop to the petty in politics,
once they are fairly well launched in active participation of civic
affairs. Neither their training nor their outlook, based upon their
training, will permit it. For engineers, more than any other group of
professional men, are given to "see true." And seeing true, being, as it
is, the essence of a full life, is what is needed in our public
administrators.
Engineers in the past who have become more or less prominent in the
public eye--and there are some who have--have demonstrated their ability
to see things as they are. Westinghouse was the first man in this
country to foresee the coming of the half-holiday Saturday as an
innovation that promised general adoption. He granted it to all his
employees at a time when lesser industrial captains believed him to be
at least "queer." Ford set the pace for a minimum rate of five dollars a
day in his plant, and lesser captains still frown upon him for having
perpetrated this "evil." Edison, among other things, has told of the
importance of loose clothing--loose shoes and collars and hats--to a man
who would enjoy good health. The list is not long, but the insight of
those who form this short list cannot but be recognized. What these men
have said and done concerning matters freely apart from the subject of
engineering reveals them as members of a fraternity well qualified to
lead public opinion rather than to follow it, as has been the province
of engineers in the past. Each when he has spoken or entered upon action
having the public welfare in mind has pronounced or demonstrated a truth
which fairly crackled with sanity.
Engineers belong in civic affairs. The world of humanity needs men of
their stamp in high places. Humanity needs men in control of state and
national affairs who would hold the interests of humanity sacred.
Engineers are such men. Not that engineers more than any other
professional men are sprouting wings--not that. But engineers do see
things in their true light--cannot see them in any other light than the
one imposed by the law of mathematics, which is that two and two make
four, never five or three--and this involuntarily would admit of
decisions and grant graces from the point of view of absolute truth,
which is, of course, the point of view of humanity--the greatest good
for the greatest number. With such men occupying high places in the
nation's affairs, the world of men and mankind would leap forward
ethically and spiritually at a pace in keeping with the pace at which
civilization has progressed under the impetus of engineering thought
since the days of Watt. Nobody can deny _that_ progress. Nobody could
well deny the fact that ethical progress under engineering guidance
would be equally great.
I hold a brief for engineers, of course. Engineering has been my major
work for twenty years and more. It has been my privilege to associate
intimately with two men--yea, three--possessed of great engineering
ability. The third man failed of great repute, owing chiefly to his
advanced--rather too much advanced--visionings. He wanted to talk across
the ocean by telephone at a time when the cable interests successfully
prevented him from commercializing his apparatus. And he died a
disappointed inventor. But he had the stuff in him, the thing that makes
for human greatness, just as had the other and more successful two men
with whom I as a designer was privileged to work. All were men of kindly
spirit, of broad outlook, of unselfish devotion to worldly interests.
Each was a humanitarian. Each saw things as they are, and each saw
things as they should be, and each thought much on problems of human
welfare and betterment. Of such men in civic affairs the nation, and
indeed the entire world of nations, has had but a sad too few in the
past. It is to be hoped, and it is the belief of the writer, that
engineers will become more plentiful in civic life in the future.
I have always believed that the man who reached an advanced age without
a sizable bank-account is a fact which would well serve as a definition
as to what constitutes an idealist. There are many such men--meaning, of
course, men having a level set of brains, and not mental incompetents.
Such men are inclined to things other than the accumulation of
bank-accounts. They strive toward goals which to them are more worth
while--self-improvement, for instance, spiritual growth being a better
term. Of such men were the world's acknowledged saviors. A man who can
wilfully thrust oars against the current of a stream flowing
currency-wise, in such a way as to force himself into a back eddy or
pool more or less stagnant, is a man pronouncedly great among men. The
world is loath to recognize such a man for what he is; yet such men have
lived and still live and will continue to live, always more for others
than for themselves--seeing life in the true, in other and more gracious
words.
Engineers, in the abstract, are such men. The accumulation of money is
secondary with them. Their work holds first place in importance.
Possessed of that professional pride which will not permit a man to set
aside his work and enter a more lucrative and materially satisfactory
field of endeavor--if he starve in his obstinacy--engineers are men of
the temperament, aside from the training, to minister to public needs
and desires. Self-effacement is the engineer's chief characteristic. He
views largely and without bias. He can see things from the other
fellow's angle because he is not an engineer if he has not the gift of
imagination. The successful engineer has this most precious of
endowments, and, having it, cannot but be possessed also of kindliness
and sympathy, which are imagination's own brothers. Kindliness and
sympathy are needed in the high places of our government for the people
by the people. And because men in time gravitate to their rightful
sphere of usefulness through the workings of an all-wise Providence,
engineers already have turned and are turning toward the administration
of public affairs.
IX
CODE OF ETHICS